Image: U.S. Secretary of State [at the time] John Kerry participates in the event on the UN Paris Agreement Entry into Force at the United Nations, in New York City, New York on September 21, 2016.
While we ramp up our commitment to the United Nations Paris Agreement, other Governments around the world are either rejecting or reducing their climate targets because the cost of compliance is so high they cannot be achieved without sacrificing living standards, argues Muriel Newman.
Assertions that man-made global warming is responsible for catastrophic climate change have not stood up to scrutiny and faced, with the escalating cost of green energy and a litany of false predictions, the public around the world, have had enough.
President Trump, of course, is leading the global charge against climate activism with his decision to pull the US out of the Paris Agreement: “It is the policy of my Administration to put the interests of the United States and the American people first in the development and negotiation of any international agreements with the potential to damage or stifle the American economy.”
Unfortunately for New Zealand, our Coalition Government remains committed to the UN’s de-industrialisation agenda even though our contribution to global emissions is not only infinitesimal but is based on lies.
The Net Zero objectives put in place by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and the Green Party’s Climate Minister James Shaw overstated the warming effect of the methane produced by livestock during digestion by a factor of four. At only 1.7 parts per million in the atmosphere, while methane has a slightly stronger warming potential than carbon dioxide, it also operates logarithmically, which means it has a miniscule impact on the climate.
Furthermore, the methane that’s produced breaks down quickly into water and the carbon dioxide required to feed the grass that feeds the livestock as part of the ancient carbon cycle.
However, instead of correcting the overstated methane values that Labour retained to make our farmers look bad, the Coalition appears to be playing the same game.
In late January, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts, announced that we had lodged a second Nationally Determined Commitment to the Paris Agreement for the period 2026 to 2035 – raising the Ardern promise of cutting emissions by 50 percent from 2005 levels by 2030 to a 51 to 55 percent reduction by 2035.
Since the Paris Agreement is a voluntary accord, with no sanctions for non-compliance, New Zealand was one of only a handful of countries that complied with the February 10 deadline. No doubt many of those countries that failed to deliver are having to re-consider their position in light of growing public hostility towards net-zero.
The convenor of the Methane Science Accord, Owen Jennings, a former Federated Farmers President and Member of Parliament, is highly critical of the Coalition’s approach:
“What was Climate Minister Watts thinking about ratcheting up New Zealand’s Greenhouse Gas reduction targets? Why is the Coalition making it worse? Over a $1 billion of precious tax money has gone into trying to find answers to the so-called methane emissions’ problem. Now we’re committing to throwing another billion at this fictitious problem. We have built a whole industry around the emissions’ charade.”
While supporters of Net Zero have long pushed the line that we cannot withdraw from Paris because of retaliation from our trading partners, that argument no longer holds water.
Our major trading partners are China at almost 28 percent of total trade, United States and Australia at around 12 percent, and the European Union at 10 percent.
With China ignoring climate restrictions altogether, and now the US, that only leaves Australia and the EU. But with the main opposition parties in Australia planning to water down their Paris pledges ahead of their upcoming election, and the European Union now questioning their own commitment, there’s nothing to stop our Government from pulling out of Paris.
While the Coalition claims to be repairing the damage caused by the over-zealous approach of Labour and the Greens, some of what they are planning will make the situation worse.
Not only will even more of our productive farmland get turned into pine tree wastelands for carbon farming, but our farmers will end up being forced into using a range of technological “solutions” to reduce methane, including enzyme inhibitors, genetically modified grasses, and vaccines, all of which risk turning consumers away from New Zealand-produced meat and milk.
On top of this, the Coalition is establishing two new climate related regulatory regimes: the first to enable the building of offshore wind farms; at a time when other countries are turning against them because of the negative impact they have on the marine environment; and the second to support highly experimental carbon capture schemes.
China, India and Russia are all ignoring the Paris Agreement. President Trump is pulling the US out, and Argentina, Indonesia and possibly Canada (if there’s a change of government) are poised to follow.
With the consensus in the EU crumbling, isn’t it time our Coalition Government put the national interest and well-being of New Zealanders first, and opted out of Paris as well?